The Push
by Daisy Red
Summary: Captain Elliot Spencer gets a taste of his future as he crosses No Man's Land. One-Shot featuring Elliot and a couple of OC characters.


**A/N: I wanted to do a story about Captain Elliot Spencer's experiences during the war. It is a short one-shot which hopefully is not too difficult to read. Because of Elliot's presence in No Mans Land, there are some descriptions of death and injury. To be safe, I have rated this M. I hope you enjoy. Please feel free to review.**

**Copyright belongs to Clive Barker and Dimension films.**

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The Push

'What's your name son?'

The gunner looked up at the questioning man with the sad blue eyes and gave him a wan smile. As he spluttered his answer, a rivulet of blood crept out of his mouth and trickled off his sweat slickened jaw. Captain Elliot Spencer felt a pang of guilt about forgetting the Private's name but it was always difficult to identify a face whose features were so contorted with pain. Recognition never got any easier, despite the vast number of anguished features he had encountered during the campaign. He bit his lip when he noticed that the lad had no stubble on his face. It was obvious that he hadn't even started shaving yet.

'B…Bill Spenser s…sir.'

Elliot gave the wounded soldier a warm smile and kept his hands firmly on the boy's chest. He was certain that the compress would be ineffectual but company for the dying was the tiniest of luxuries that could be afforded those not killed outright by sniper bullets and shell fire. It was the presence of a friendly face that distracted the dying bodies from the dead ones that lay beside them. In a small way, it also afforded them a slice of hope even if they knew in their heart of hearts that it was a futile promise.

'You have the exact same surname as me,' said Elliot, keeping the boy's gaze. 'A strange coincidence wouldn't you say old chap?' Elliot smiled again and repositioned his palms across the gushing wound. 'The stretcher bearers will be here soon and the medics will fix you up in no time at all.'

It was a lie, and one of many he had told in the field. He idly wondered if there was any such thing as a good lie. Still, it was a small sin in comparison to what he and his comrades had done during the last few months. So many had gone, some by his hand, some by the hands of others but there was little choice and if you didn't shoot you would be shot. No, this wasn't murder, it was war and maybe with enough repentance you can still keep your soul. Two years in service, nine months as Captain and still there seemed to be no end to the conflict and of course, no end to the reams of dead youth whose eyes lost their sparkle as he watched helplessly. He could barely remember the days when he felt proud of promotion, when he felt useful to his country and when the promise of duty was the beginning of a thrilling adventure. Those days were long gone.

Elliot felt movement under his hands and clenched his jaw as the boy's body began to jolt. Bill's lungs were desperately trying to embrace the freezing air, but were simply too ravished by the bullets which had peppered his chest maybe an hour before. Elliot was surprised and horrified that the private had lasted this long. Of course he wanted the young man to live, but there was a part which prayed for merciful release from the pain he was obviously suffering and it now looked as if his prayers were being listened to. Breaking his gaze from the soldier, he peered into the smoky night sky and caught sight of a shooting star, leaving no more than a ghost of a scratch in the Heavens.

'Do you know that when I first arrived here, I saw a shooting star and made a wish? Did you know that son? That you can wish on a shooting star? Alas, they have never come true on those occasions, yet I keep wishing each time I see one.' Elliot gave a soft sigh. 'I suppose you young lads might say it was naïve but…'

Elliot paused when he realised that the boy's blood beneath his hands had ceased its pulsating barrage against his fingers. He glanced down at the still body and sighed. 'They never come true. Rest in peace, son.'

Captain Spencer rose from the mud and left his namesake where he lay. The wagons would be around soon to pick up his body and the rest of the corpses that littered the once beautiful countryside. Elliot stayed in a crouched position for a while, wondering if he should take his cap off before he headed back to safety. He knew that officers in the field were coveted targets for the enemy's trigger finger and although the enemy charges on both sides produced massive casualties amongst the men, any officer leading would be effectively torn apart. Indeed, Captain Garrington had been slain the day before, giving Elliot a band of his orphaned troops to fight alongside his merry lot. The dead boy had been under Garrington's command yesterday and Elliot's command today. Tonight he was in no man's land under no man's command, except maybe God's. Elliot clenched his jaw again. God. He had wanted to believe that there was a place better than this Hell on Earth but every little piece of torn human flesh, every bloody morsel that was feasted on by the rats and every single loss of life under his command made him question the existence of any Deity.

He retreated back to the trench with his cap firmly on. On the way back, he stopped besides dead comrades and searched in their packs for any rations that could be distributed to his young charges back at base. The first time he had done this as a Lieutenant he had felt as though he was violating the sanctity of the dead but as time passed, the needs of the living were of priority. The dead were quickly mourned and you moved on. That's what you did, that's all you could do. Once he had taken a few items, he set off again, aware that to linger above ground was foolhardy.

It took a few minutes before he reached the man with the barbed wire shrapnel in his face and knew that he was maybe a few hundred metres away from safety. Because the dead soldier's wounds were so severe, he had become a marker for Elliot. In order for Elliot to get his bearings amongst the mud heaps, severed body parts and bomb craters, it became a morbid habit for the Captain to choose the corpse that was most memorably disfigured and use him as a human breadcrumb. This poor soul captured Elliot's attention at first sight. His pitiful image was burned onto Elliot's retinas and the revulsion of the grotesquely deformed man firmly hammered into his brain. The mortar bomb had gone off next to the barbed wire, which had exploded into a million ragged pins into the soldier's face. Elliot wasn't sure if he had died instantly but he hoped that was the case. He looked back at the propped up needle-riddled face of the soldier and felt a few tears stinging his cheeks.

'I'm so sorry,' he whispered to the man.

It was the first time Elliot had cried in months, helping to moisturize his smoke-dried and tired eyes but allowing him to feel human, if a somewhat wretched one. Elliot wiped his cheeks with his sleeve and pushed onward toward his destination. In the distance, to the side of him, he caught sight of the medics winging their way around the bodies that littered the ground. They would be administering a lot of Morphine tonight, turning down the volume of agonized pleas for help, sometimes turning them off altogether.

Elliot continued for a few seconds more and then stopped next to a mortar crater. _That sound! _ He turned to face the unusual noise that seemed to come from an abandoned and semi-demolished cottage to the right. At first he thought that the unrelenting barrage of artillery fire had damaged his hearing and he shook his head violently in an attempt to shoo away the gentle tinkling of music that was lapping the cold night air. He could still hear it. As he concentrated on the startling melody, he was reminded of a child's music box but he knew that was impossible. There had been intelligence that enemy snipers had been occasionally using the cottage as a vantage point but what would a sniper be doing playing music, revealing his whereabouts?

Elliot strained to see into the interior of the building but could see nothing. A small voice deep in his head urged him to move, and quick, but he knew he couldn't. Elliot had to know if the enemy were housed in the battered structure. It was his duty and besides, he couldn't take the chance at leaving a potential enemy soldier concealed until his time to add more of Elliot's platoon to the roster of the dead.

Placing himself inside a mortar hole, Elliot kept vigil on the house. It took a second before the hideous scream - carried on the wind- reached his ears. Instinctively, Elliot reached at his hip and grabbed his pistol. During his time in this war, Captain Spencer had heard many screams. Too many to count and after a while it was possible to separate the dying cries of man from the wounded groans of others. Sometimes you could tell by the scream, the way in which they had been injured but this sound was like no other that Elliot had encountered. There was a prolonged agony in the voice, suggesting to Elliot that someone was being tortured in the cottage. Elliot felt sure that whoever had been caught in that cottage was suffering from God knows what kind of torment. When the volume of the screaming died down, he turned his head to look for the medics and when he caught sight of the hunched figures doing their jobs, he frowned. Surely they must have heard those awful sounds but as he watched, Elliot began to realize that they had missed it. Not one of the lads in the field had raised their heads or in any way, looked for the spine-chilling shriek that had emanated from the cottage.

Snapping his head round, Elliot stared wide eyed at the entrance of the cottage. His pistol was aimed toward it but he knew that any shot fired would be out of range and besides, he could see nobody that warranted the aim, at least nobody that he could see. He could only hear the cries and the sobbing and the entreating for mercy filtering through the dark air. At another time, the desperate pleading would have spurred him to action, but there was something threatening about the situation, more so than was usual in battle. The whole space around the cottage seemed darker; a void which would swallow anything that would be foolish enough to venture close by but inside the cottage there now came a light, a subtle blue glow that created shadowy demons from the cracked wooden plinths and artillery-battered masonry. Elliot had never seen anything like it and he remained pinned to the spot, unable to make his legs move, unwilling to blink or take a deep breath.

The cries eventually became sobbing and then all was quiet. Elliot lowered his pistol only to jerk it back up when he spotted a shadowy figure emerging through the doorway. The ethereal glow behind the figure swept down the back of its long dark coat, giving some semblance of shape to the thing. It was dressed in black, not regulation Khaki and it moved with a slow grace that felt contrary to its surroundings. Elliot didn't dare to move an inch. He figured that it must be a civilian as it wore no uniform that he could recognise but for some reason that Elliot couldn't place, he felt an inhuman presence about it. This strange figure before him seemed far too comfortable amongst the scarred earth and even seemed to be revelling in the atmosphere of death and destruction. When the figure turned to face Elliot, the partial moonlight lit up its features. Elliot's cry caught in his throat. He could feel his heartbeat pumping viciously and every shred left of his sanity yelled at him to get away from it now! On seeing this creature, the World suddenly seemed larger and more dangerous. The thing before him was no man, of that Elliot was now positive. It was either Death or the Devil and as much as he wanted to, Elliot could not move. It would not allow him to.

The creature looked at him with bulging eyes that were wide and black, with the taut wires entrenched in its head giving tension to the hooks that were keeping its eyelids open. The new enemy could not blink and its maddening stare kept Elliot's horrified gaze although its eyes were not the worst of its features. The demon's mouth had been wrenched into a grin that ran almost entirely across his face, with more bloodied hooks keeping the sinister grin in place for eternity. Elliot felt the bile rising in his throat and for all the World, he desperately wanted to tear his own eyes out of their sockets so he wouldn't see the monstrosity anymore. That thing, that inhuman thing, with chains wrapped tightly around its black robe and its white-frozen skin was a punishment to behold, its features a mocking testament to the death-soaked fields that surrounded it. Now it spoke to him in a voice that sounded like a hammer on a tombstone.

'The pleasure will be yours.'

Elliot felt he could take no more and forced his eyes shut. In those few seconds of gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyelids together, the music stopped. When Elliot opened his eyes the sickening apparition had vanished. The cottage was engulfed in silence and darkness once again.

It took a while before Elliot managed to reach the trench on legs that felt drained of strength. He gave the barbed fence surrounding the base a wide berth. Even the unexplainable event in the cottage could not erase the image of the man riddled with wires and the myriad of horrific images swimming in his mind and the memory of the night's events combined to make Elliot feel sick to his stomach. As he descended the ladder into the muddy labyrinth, a soldier scurried up to him and saluted. It was one of his orphaned soldiers.

'You alright sir? You look peaky. You're not injured are you?'

'No, I'm fine, thank you Benjamin. I just…I just need to rest. Close my eyes for a little while.' Elliot hoped the young man would take the hint.

'Yessir.' The concerned man nodded and made his way down the mud passageway, alert to the tremulous tone in his superior's voice and recognizing a fellow soldier's need for solitude.

Elliot uncurled his shaking hands from the wooden rungs of the ladder and crept down the trench a little way. He then realized that his dug out was near the other end and knew he could never make it with legs that were about to collapse from under him. Weary and shaken, he found an unoccupied funk hole and leaned heavily into the circular hole cut into the wall. As fatigued as he was, there would be no sleep for the Captain. The night's events ensured that his eyes would remain as open as the eyes of the demon he encountered. Not for the first time, Elliot felt that perhaps he was falling into insanity. He glanced upwards, out from the trench and into the sky, only to catch another meteor zipping through the atmosphere and as before, he made a wish. He didn't want to be here anymore. He didn't want to be alive. His thoughts returned to the man with the barbed pins in his head and an unwelcome feeling suddenly grabbed at his heart like a black clawed hand. He didn't feel pity for the man now; he only felt an overwhelming sense of envy.

The End.


End file.
